A timely warning from Rep. Gutierrez

Rep. Luis Gutierrez warns of “unprecedented militancy” from the immigrant community in response to the injunction issued by Judge Andrew Hanen against President Obama’s executive order on immigration. The militancy, he explains, will be directed at Republicans:

The Republican party is making a critical mistake. The militancy that will be activated throughout the immigrant community — in terms of voter registration, voter participation, voter anger at the Republican party as a party in the United States — I think you’re going to see it in an unprecedented manner.

Look, you may think you won today, but your victory is going to be very short-lived. And November 2016 is coming right around the corner, and this will come back to haunt you.

Whatever the value of Gutierrez’s statement as a prediction about 2016, it unquestionably has value as an unintended warning about the consequences of creating a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

If a court decision that does nothing more than uphold basic principles about the limits of executive power will precipitate “unprecedented” political activism directed against Republicans, how can Republicans rationally favor legislation that will make the GOP even more vulnerable to such activism in the future?

Our system of government is already under assault from President Obama and his base. Republicans should dismiss out of hand the notion of adding millions of shock troops, all of them lawbreakers and many coming from countries where presidential supremacy is taken for granted, to that base.

And they should thank Rep. Gutierrez for reminding them of the “unprecedented militancy” that awaits if the GOP gifts him and his party unprecedented number of new citizen militants.

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